Anarking

Past I Present You The Future

So looking over the conversations I’ve had, I realize that although I own half a house here and have lived here for 4 years I have never accepted this windy red headed step child of mine. I look back fondly on NYC and hope for the shores of southern California like a boy at the junior prom looks forward to unsnapping his dance partners bra. Chicago is different, I can only think of it with the same fondness truckers have for pit stops. A toilet, a place to rest my head, and maybe a gloryhole in the bathroom. Maybe I was like this in New York. Maybe I’m destined to never be satisfied. If so than this maybe the blog equivalent of doves crying.

The Past

Interpol was my exit song. It played as I drove the moving van west toward Philadelphia. It played as I gave the last of my middle fingered gestures to the last new york cabbie I would feel a connection to as a New Yorker. It bounced around in the cabin of that rickety van while I tried to hold back a few stray tears that were welling up from my wife as she mentioned how beautiful the sky like was in the late afternoon. “Fuck this city” was all I could say, New York knows I didn’t mean it but that’s what she trained me to say. I like to think I made her proud that day. Anyways this song is special to me on many levels some of which I won’t bore you with the others you could never understand unless you lived here for a while. I mean really lived here, not went to school here then off you go. The city is a dirty whore when you live it, try to pay rent knowing you can’t afford it, knowing you shouldn’t pay it. My friend Lucas the one with the blog on the side says he doesn’t miss it a bit, I think he’s making New York proud as well. To truly love this city you have to be willing to tell her to fuck off because when you go back it’s like that angry awkward sex between two ex’s who know what the other likes.

The Strokes remind me of one of the many things I hated about the City but in a way I love to this day. Kind of like a spoon full of heroin helping the medicine go down.

The Present

Chicago is like the girlfriend you have but are not that into. The only reason you stick around is in the hopes of getting with one of her friends and because she is polite to your mom. You know it’s not going to last. Perhaps she will go to college out of state and you can go on with your life. You try to distance yourself from her but she just wants you to love her as much as you did the girl before her. She just wants you to be happy even though you secretly miss the abuse and head games you ex provided. So she agrees to an “open relationship” in the vain hopes that this act of selfless apeasment will win your affections but all you do is whore around and look toward the day you leave her to cry over you and call you up in the middle of the night asking if under different circumstances you would have married her. Of course you are polite but you know better don’t you? I’m sorry Chicago (but not really). I know I’m a bastard for using you like this but the harder you try, the less I love you.

Lawrence Arms (one of my favorite Chicago punk bands second to The Vindictives) explains my life accurately…

Rise Against croons…

The Future

Ahh California the goal. Ponce D’Leon was wrong about where the fountain of youth was, wasn’t he? You know why I love you, you remember the first time we played “I’ll-show-you-mine-you-show-me-your’s” under the orange tree in your father’s backyard. You were my first kiss, the innocence of childhood before all the uglyness and hair pulling during sex. You didn’t care that I had an accent or that I came from a coutry that was dominated by a country you were mad at. How could you, how could we, we were young. I never stopped thinking about you. Nothing sexual, just your warm smile and sunkissed hair that smelled like coconuts even in the late evenings.

The Ramones teach many lessons and should be an auditory requirement for all teenagers but alas our youth is doomed to listen to the likes of Soulja Boy and other such poisons. I think of the The Ramones as my safety blanket, they reassure me that, “hey three chords is all you need to be happy so fuck Mozart and the Midwest, eyes on the prize bucko, eyes on the prize”.

NoFX will be played very loudly when I finally pack up and leave.

I swear coconuts.

I partied with - Pink

What an unwashed strumpet. I swear, I can’t think of a more dick thing to be than a bouncer for a celebrity, ok I can but not for this post. So I somehow got an invite to a private party hosted by Blender or some other rag of a magazine. This party was in a huge loft somewhere in the meat packing district, which made it very hip and very exclusive. To me the meat packing district still smells like pork vagina and death. No matter how much glass, concrete and sex & the city spin offs you throw at it it’s still the Auschwitz of barnyard animals.

So here I am hanging out with my then girlfriend and some friends who just finished playing a fantastic set to a bunch of self absorbed celebritarts and their bored assistants. The few of us who where there and never had a spread in any magazine loved the set. Unfortunately the band no longer exists and the world will never know what they missed.

So okay we are all sitting on this couch, the band is sweating all over it and coming off their performance high, like unknown bands get when they think they are around the corner from that big break. We are just getting into the deepest crevices of the chill groove, melting into the couch, alcohol is being awesome to me, when this huge gorilla of a man insists we have to leave as quickly as possible because the couch has been reserved.

How the fuck is that possible? How you reserve a couch at a loft party? This is what I thought but “bleeeeeeeh” is what i said. Inability for intelligent conversation is one of the flaws of alcohol the the positives worked out in my favor in this situation. I just sat there unrelenting in my chillax mode unimpressed with the body mass of the furrow browed man in front of me, knowing full well that my pal alcohol will deaden the pain of any punches that find my face. At most the man will get some puke and blood on his cliche suit. The man seemed to be aware of this and turned his attention at the couch in front of us with a more desired reaction.

Now I was interested, what douche tells bodyguards to clear couches for their entourage. To my amusement this was not a douche but a douchess. A pixie body with the face of a meth addict standing before me was the color of poser. Pink with black hair superlow cut jeans that covered her abused naughty parts by either sheer will or some sort of dark magic. She began to, or continued to, act like a complete trollop by screaming loudly and telling her friends not to sit down because she and her fuckstick wanted to make out while jumping on the couch. I get it you are the rebel, you are the bad/tough girl, you can do what you want and no one is going to tell you otherwise not even Maury Povich. Except you’re not. You opened up for N’Sync and more recently Justin Timberlake, you sold your soul to Sony BMG, and you hire bodyguards so you can sit on a couch. Yeah a real bad ass.

So with Pink’s next single, “So What”, going for radio adds August 18th and her new album ready for purchase October 28th and pirating shortly before that, I wish miss that-couch-is-mine continued success at her mediocrity and exploitation of all things Hot Topic.

Meet Jamie T

When I find some music that strikes a particular chord on my internal flying v I tend to obsess about it. Jamie T is my newest and a pretty long lasting one. It’s rap but not, it’s ska but not, it’s rock but not. Whatever it is it makes me want to dance around with my dog like a thirty something year old woman in a payless shoes commercial.

If You Got The Money:

Acoustic Version:

Now I’ll admit I’m a bit of a Britophile when it comes to music but British music just sounds better. It’s like this: America invented rock, England made it not so cheesy and in return the US took Ska and ruined it. I know I know ska is from Jamaica but I’m taking second wave here, the ska that the US was introduce to first. As far as Punk goes there are two ways of looking at it:
1. Punk is the message in the music, see Clash, Jam, Sex Pistols. If you agree with that then Punk is of British origin.
2. Punk is the music alone, just sped up and dumbed down rock, see Ramones. If you agree with that then you’re probably American and also wrong.